Longhorn

Does it have Beans in it?

Well, I can add another meal to my pureed foods experience. I know a lot of people rave about the Magic Bullet but I got a $10 electric mini food chopper at the grocery store and it works great! Tonight my husband made Pasta with chunks of chicken breast and sun-dried tomato sauce. I put my serving, heavy on the chicken, in the chopper and pureed it in seconds. It tasted great and went down very easily. I chewed a lot and used my minute timer again. I even got a more definitive "full" signal this time -- just a little bit of pressure at the top of my stomach, along with that soft hiccup I usually get. Now I feel like I ate a big meal, but I'm still not uncomfortably stuffed. I probably ate about a cup of food. (My doctor never imposed a quantity limit. He said to eat until I'm full.) That little food chopper is going to open up some interesting possibilities! :confused:

Well, twice I cut the caps open and squirted it on my tongue and had enough of the that. The taste started making me feel nauseas and I was squirting it all over my vanity. So I went ahead and swallowed them and they went down just fine. But boy, oh boy, I forgot that there are some side effects until you get used to it again! I need to remember to take it with food. Glad I was home today! :confused:

I'll be interested in what you think about it! Thanks!

There are all kinds of surgeries. Could you tell your friends you've had surgery to repair a hernia? Turns out, I had a hernia that I didn't know about that was repaired during my surgery. If you don't want to lie (and don't end up having a hernia,) can you get away with just saying you've had some minor surgery but don't really want to discuss it? Or perhaps you hurt your back and your doctor said not to lift anything? Almost everyone has had back pain at some point in their lives so it's pretty well understood. Whatever you decide, don't be lifting heavy objects! I suspect it won't be comfortable bending over too much by then anyway. It took me a little longer for my port pain to go away. You'll still want to take it easy. Good luck!

I think so, too! I got the impression that the Bugg could somehow detect calories in as well as calories out but according to someone on that other thread, you still have to enter your calories. It sounds like a great idea and I'm sure there are others who are finding it helpful but I think I'll stick with something less expensive for now.

The 17th is my mother's 75th birthday. What a special day for so many people! I'll be thinking of you and sending you positive vibes! Good luck, Tish!

Welcome! Glad you came through your surgery okay! For the weight tickers, just click on the link next to someone's ticker and that will take you to one of the sites that offer them. Once you go through the menus and create your own, you'll get a code that you paste into your signature (go to UserCP at the top of any page on this site.) For most ticker sites, I think the code in the top box works the best but you can preview your signature on the Edit Signature page to make sure it's working. Take care!

Congratulations and thanks for sharing your experience! Wow, I'm glad I've been able to help -- my enthusiasm for this decision must be showing. :girl_hug: I think you'll be amazed that the soreness you are feeling now will go away so quickly. After the morning of my third day, I started feeling better and better, even when something new came up like my incision infection. Today I have no soreness at all in any position and I exercised for the first time on my recumbent bike. I got interrupted after half an hour but I'm going to get back on and do some more. My husband and I moved it up to our bedroom where I think I'll use it more often. Get plenty of rest and let yourself heal as much as you can. You'll probably find that the getting up and down is the hardest part, so once you're up, take advantage and do a slow stroll around the house. Don't forget the heating pad for the pain! I'll look forward to hearing how you're doing! :clap2:

Kristin: We have so much in common! I, too, can stick to just about any diet as far as WHAT to eat but it's the HOW MUCH that would get me. I would just feel so deprived if I had this *tiny* amount of food on my plate and I would feel hungry all the time. I could control it for awhile, even long enough to lose some weight. But then the weight loss would stall (for weeks, not just days) and I would give up. Or, on the few times that I reached my goal, I would go back to eating what I thought was normal and gain the weight, even when I was exercising and trying my darndest not to gain. I now realize that after you've lost weight, *normal* isn't normal any more. My husband and daughters can eat twice what I eat and I would still gain. But I couldn't face a life of being hungry and/or deprived on the new *normal* for me. This is why I believe the band is working for me and will continue to work. When I can eat almost anything I want but in just a couple of bites and not be hungry and not feel deprived and then be rewarded by losing weight or eventually maintaining -- that's a dream come true! It felt so good Thursday night to eat four fried cheese sticks and feel as if I had had a great meal! I wasn't stuffed but I didn't feel like I wanted or needed any more food! My doctor wants me to eat three meals a day with no snacking but frankly, I don't think snacking will hurt me because a 100-calorie sugar free pudding does the trick and I'm satisfied until the next meal. In the past, that just wasn't the case -- a "snack" could turn into two hours of grazing and then it was time for the next meal. I almost always made good choices and I never binged. I even kept track of what I ate and rarely exceeded 1600-1800 calories in a day, which was supposed to be a deficit of at least 600 calories, not counting what I burned through exercise. But I either stayed the same or gained. Between my age and my history of dieting, I realize that I can't lose weight on that many calories. My body won't be "fooled" again. :girl_hug:

You can also PM or email someone (depending on his or her preferences) by clicking on the member's user name in a post and then click on "View Public Profile." If the member allows getting PMs or emails, there will be a link on that page.

I haven't had any pain from eating. Last night, I swallowed two soft-gel supplements, one at a time, waiting in between, and I could feel the second one but it wasn't really pain. As far as food, I usually start out with what I believe is a reasonable amount and that's all I serve myself. The only question, then, is will I eat all of it? I'm eating so much more slowly than I used to (with a one-minute timer to help me between bites) that I find that I just *feel* like I've had enough. But at the restaurant where I had the fried cheese sticks the other night, there were probably ten to 12 on the plate. I was sharing them with others so I didn't ask to have any removed. However, I used my timer and after each bite, I evaluated whether I felt like I was satisfied. I was especially careful on the fourth one because I felt like I was reaching my limit so I took it very slowly. Amazingly, in the time it took me to eat those four cheese sticks, my husband, daughter and son-in-law had finished their sandwiches and fries! I also sometimes get a soft hiccup a few minutes after I finish. It feels like an affirmation that I had enough, I guess because I have read on this board that others say that's their way of knowing. If I stop too soon and find myself hungry in an hour or two, I have a sugar-free pudding or a Low-Carb SlimFast but most of the time, that hasn't happened. Of course, I'm still learning like the rest of y'all! But I'd be thrilled if I never experience any pain or other negative side effects, even if it takes me longer to lose weight.

I didn't have staples either but I was able to sleep on my side the first night. I slept with a body pillow tucked under my belly and between my knees (you can use two pillows, too.) It was uncomfortable to turn over from one side to the other but once I was in position, I was okay again. I also was taking Tylenol with codeine. I asked my husband to sleep in another room so I wouldn't have to worry about disturbing him when I turned or if I had decided to get up and sleep in the recliner. By the third night, he was able to sleep with me again. I still had some soreness that I could feel when I turned over for about the first ten days.

Your recipe sounds great, bandpal! And for those who don't know, you can get canned chickpeas to save a little time. They have them on the veggie aisle at my regular grocery store.

From the FAQ board: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f73/post-op-checklists-things-have-before-surgery-14814/

When I saw my doctor eight days after surgery, he noticed that the edges of my port incision were red and a wider band around the incision was a lighter red. I had no fever or other symptoms (though I had a fever of just under 100 the first couple of days after surgery.) He told me to watch for either band of redness getting wider, which could be a sign of infection. The next day, the light red band was wider so I called him and he called in a prescription for antibiotics. I wasn't able to pick it up for two days and the redness seemed a little wider and the incision was still sore. Within a day of taking the antibiotics, the incision started looking better, the red started to fade, and the soreness started going away. It healed up just fine. I think it's normal to be sore but you'll want to watch for other signs.

I've been on mushies for two weeks and I was nervous, too. Here are some of the things I've been eating: sugar free pudding made with a scoop of unflavored

Yes, that's the reason we had to go out to watch the game. The place was packed! We were going to go to a sports bar next door but it was already overflowing. There was an article in the paper today that every place in Austin that had satellite TV was packed. Our server told us she had been working at Red Robin for six months and had never seen it so busy. I'm on the side of the cable companies. The NFL Network wants to charge the cable companies $8 per year per customer to carry it. That's more than they pay for CNN and there's only a handful of games per year! Our cable company, Time Warner, wants to put the network on a sports tier that customers would pay extra for if they want it. Makes more sense to me! Why should people who have no interest in football have to see their cable bill go up? Anyway, I'll bet your husband is as excited about the Cowboys as I am! :whoo:

Lumpy: You need to click on UserCP at the top of the page and then on "Edit Signature" and paste the code for your ticker in the signature box and save. You can also preview it first by clicking on the button beneath the box.

Tonight I just cut off the ends with scissors and squeezed each one on the back of my tongue where I could barely taste it. It doesn't actually taste bad. I think that may be the easiest way in the long run. Thanks for the suggestions, though! One of these days, I may just try to swallow them but I'm scared.

I had a great ending to my four-week anniversary! I met my husband and daughter and son-in-law at a Red Robin restaurant to watch the Cowboys-Packers game since we don't have the NFL Network on our cable system. Anyway, after looking over the menu, I decided to get the fried cheese sticks. Now, I know that doesn't sound particularly healthy but I'm still on mushies and everything else came with bread or chips or lots of chunky stuff. Well, out of an order of probably a dozen cheese sticks, I had four! I brought my one-minute timer and waited a minute between bites. When I stopped at four, it was because I felt full, not because I hurt or just thought I should stop. In the past, I could have eaten the entire order and then eaten a sandwich or some other entree! It felt so good to have a treat like that but in a small portion and not feel the least bit deprived! I also had two glasses of wine over a span of about three hours. It's not something I'll do every day but this was a special occasion. And the Cowboys won!

I've only seen them bring back a handful of former contestants. Have all of those people kept the weight off? I seriously doubt it. To me, my band is less of a weight loss tool and more of a weight maintenance tool. There are lots of ways to lose weight and I've already done a lot of them, some with success and some without. But I've never been successful at keeping it off for more than a year. I'm banking on the band helping me keep it off. I don't know why people don't understand the difference between losing weight and keeping it off!

Before I had surgery, I started taking CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid) -- two soft-gels in the morning and two in the evening. There are studies that have shown that it can help get rid of belly fat. I honestly thought it was working -- without trying to lose weight, I had dropped about five pounds and my belly did seem a little flatter. I asked my nutritionist about it and she had read the studies and said she saw no reason why I shouldn't continue taking it, especially since I bought a large supply. Since they're kind of big, I haven't tried to swallow them. Even if I can swallow them now, I haven't had any fills yet. I'm going to be a pretty big baby about avoiding the PBs! This morning, I punctured two of them and squirted the oil into my Propel. Well, duh! Oil and Water don't mix! I'm sure I'll get some of it in my by the time I finish the bottle but the inside of the bottle is coated with oil. Silly me! Does anyone have any suggestions about a quick and easy way to get the oil out of the soft-gels and into me? Thanks!

It's really hard to believe because, physically, I don't feel any different than I did before the surgery. I have no pain or discomfort at all, in any position. I can feel my port with my fingers but that's the only time and even then, it's much less prominent than it was at first. I'm no longer tired, either. Today I get to begin exercising again and I'm really looking forward to it! I already feel smaller and more nimble. I still don't feel hungry unless it's time to eat and even then, it's different than before. It's not that overwhelming feeling that I'm starving. It's more physical -- I feel a little weak and even lightheaded. It feels more like a "need" and less like a "want." I enjoy food when I'm eating it but it doesn't take much to feel like I've had enough. I don't have to cut myself off -- I just reach a point of knowing that's enough and it's hard to describe how it is that I know. I won't know officially how much weight I've lost until my next appointment December 14 but I did step on my scales last weekend and I'm definitely on the way down! But I don't know how my scales compare to the doctor's and I could gain between now and then so I'll stick to the official monthly weigh-ins rather than set myself up for disappointment getting attached to a number. However, my clothes are fitting so much better and I'm wearing some things that I wouldn't wear before because they showed too many bulges. I've gone from XL to Large on a few things. :clap2: My conclusion: I'm very happy with the band! I don't know if I'll get a fill at my appointment. I don't start soft foods until the day before. If my hunger has returned, I'll get a fill but otherwise, I'll probably get used to soft foods and see what things look like at the next appointment in January. I realize it may take me longer to lose but I'd rather be comfortable and lose slowly than experience the negative side-effects of adjusting to a fill that I don't need. Guess we'll see two weeks from now! How are my fellow bandpals doing?

If I get one, it will be December 14. So far, I'm still not really hungry.